The Mane Attraction

  “Good.” Sammy pulled a blanket from the end of the bed and covered Mitch from the chest down. The last thing he needed to think about was a naked cat running around in front of his innocent baby sister. “Enjoy your soup.”

  Sammy walked out and headed back to the kitchen. Sissy stood at the stove stirring a saucepan filled with canned soup and water. Dumb cat. If he’d been nice, she’d probably make the big oaf soup from scratch. That’s something his bonehead brothers, besides Bobby Ray, had never understood. Sissy had the biggest heart Sammy had ever known. And she protected her own. But you had to treat her right, and Travis, Donnie, and Jackie never did. They let those jealous girls say all those horrible things about Sissy and sometimes joined in. It was the one thing Sammy wouldn’t tolerate. Not from anyone, but especially his own kin. Alpha or not.

  “Chicken noodle,” he said, walking into the small kitchen—small for a family of seven anyway. “My favorite.”

  “You want some?”

  “Nope.” He kissed her forehead. “I need to get back to the diner.”

  “Okay. Thanks for coming by.”

  He walked to the door and had it open when Sissy’s voice stopped him.

  “How bad can this get, Sammy? With the Pack. And don’t sugarcoat it.”

  “They tolerate you, darlin’, because you’re family. But you didn’t come alone, and Travis is going to try and use that to his advantage.”

  “Fine.” She slammed the soup spoon down. “I’ll go over there right now and—”

  “No. You won’t.” He moved next to her again and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let him make the first move.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because when it all blows up, you can tell Daddy and the Elders that Travis started it. When the time comes, that’ll work in your favor.” He placed the spoon back in her hand. “Now feed that boy before he starts whining.”

  Sissy stood in the doorway of her room, wondering where the hell Mitch was. Then she remembered that Sammy had put him to bed. No way would he have put a male in her bed.

  Smiling, she headed down the hall, checking rooms as she went.

  She found Mitch asleep in Bobby Ray’s room. Well, asleep or out cold. She really couldn’t tell at the moment. He’d been in and out of consciousness since his mother had patched him up. Roxy had warned Sissy then that Mitch might or might not get the fever that most shifters got when seriously ill or wounded. It wasn’t an easy thing to go through, but those who survived the fever usually felt stronger and healthier than they had before they’d been hurt.

  More importantly, it was over in twenty-four hours. No fever for Mitch, which meant longer to heal until his return to full strength.

  “Hey. Shithead. You awake?”

  Frowning, Mitch opened his eyes and looked at her. If she hadn’t known him and been a predator herself, Sissy probably wouldn’t hang around with that frown.

  “Keep looking at me like that, and I’ll put a pillow over your head and end this right quick.” She held up the tray holding his soup and toast. “You wanna eat, or you just gonna keep glaring at me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, taking her by surprise. “I’m not trying to be an asshole.”

  She successfully resisted the urge to say, “And yet you’re succeeding quite nicely.” Instead, she said, “You’re just in pain. When you’re feeling better, you’ll be your much more jovial asshole self.”

  She put the tray on the dresser and helped Mitch to sit up. Once settled, she put the tray down so it rested over his thighs.

  “Can you eat with your left?” she asked when Mitch only stared at the food.

  “Yeah. Sure.” But he still didn’t go for the spoon. He looked so tired.

  Glad no one could see her, Sissy sat on the side of the bed, grabbed the spoon, and scooped up some soup. “Here. I’ll help.”

  Mitch stared at the spoon, then said, “Aren’t you going to make choo-choo sounds?”

  She snorted a laugh. Even at the worst of times, the man never failed to keep that sense of humor.

  “Open your mouth before I give you a reason to cry.”

  He did, and Sissy fed him a spoonful of soup.

  “Good?”

  Mitch nodded even as he looked ready to go back to sleep. Sissy had rarely seen Mitch without his clothes on, and now she knew what his sister and mother saw. He was too thin. Too thin for their kind anyway. Compared to a full-human, Mitch was still huge, but Sissy knew better. She’d seen Brendon walking around his hotel apartment in a pair of jeans only, and the boy had been built. But Mitch had always been more the athlete of the pair. He should at least match his brother in size, if not be a little bigger.

  She’d have to work on that while he was here. Get him to eat more. A few deer, some wild boar, and he should be right as rain. Of course, that was later. Right now, she had to make sure he got stronger. She’d never seen him so weak before. So ... fragile. That simply wouldn’t do. Not for her feline.

  “Come on, another spoonful.”

  He took it, swallowed, and asked, “Where is everybody?”

  “That can wait.”

  Sissy tried to feed him again, but he turned his head. “Answer me, Sissy.”

  “Everybody is back home. And let me tell ya, convincing them to not come with us was one of the hardest things I had to do. I had to be my most persuasive, which says a lot.”

  “I’m surprised you managed.”

  She chuckled, offering him another spoonful. “Yeah. Me too. I told Brendon he had to stay in New York. Whoever did this, I want them to think you’re still there, recuperating. If he leaves, they’ll know for sure you’re not there. But your momma was a little easier to manage.”

  Mitch shook his head. “Only because she’s plotting something.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I figured. I told her not to do anything. I told her how it would piss you off.”

  “Think it’ll work?”

  “No. But you can’t say I didn’t try. Anyway, she went back to Philadelphia with Gwen. They’re fine. And so is Brendon.”

  “What if the ones who did this know I’m here?”

  “We didn’t file a flight plan for the jet, and I left our cell phones with Ronnie.”

  “No cell phones?”

  “Don’t worry. We have phones here in the sticks, too. So you can get that look off your face. Some of them even have push buttons.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. Your Yankee face said it all. But no calls for you or me. I don’t want anything traced. No e-mails either.”

  “What if you need something from Bren or Ronnie?”

  “Don’t worry. There are other ways to handle this sort of thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I mean, once my granddaddy learned that the government could tap phones, we had to come up with another way of getting information to each other without them bastards knowing or understanding what was being said. We’ve got code words and a process. It’s real intricate. So Brendon will know you’re fine.”

  Sissy held up the spoon for him again, but Mitch didn’t open his mouth. He only stared at her.

  “What?”

  “Why does it matter that the Feds can tap phone lines?”

  “You ask a lot of questions for someone who can barely keep his eyes open. Come on. One more spoonful, and then you can get some sleep.”

  He let her feed him the soup even while he watched her.

  “What about your Pack?” he asked after swallowing.

  “They’re in New York. They’ll watch out for Bren and Marissa, so don’t worry about that.”

  Mitch smiled. “Will Marissa know?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I guess she’s probably handling this well.”

  “You’d be wrong. It really ...” She couldn’t get the memory of Marissa’s tear-stained face out of her mind. “It tore her up, Mitch.”

  “See, Sissy, when you lie
to me, you strain the love and trust we’ve built.”

  “Don’t believe me. But I know what I saw, and I know Ronnie looked freaked out because she had to calm Marissa down. She was crying. But don’t believe me.”

  “I won’t. Although I appreciate you trying.”

  She put the empty bowl on the tray and helped Mitch to settle back down on the bed.

  “Sissy ...”

  She finished tucking in the sheet and looked at Mitch. “What, darlin’?”

  “I know this can’t be easy for you ... bringing me here. How much trouble will this get you into?”

  Sissy gave her cheeriest smile. The one she used when she didn’t want her father to know she’d just shoved some boy out her bedroom window moments before Daddy had walked in. Her momma never bought it, but Daddy usually did. She’d never used it on Mitch before.

  “Not a bit of trouble, darlin’. Don’t you worry.” She picked up the tray and headed toward the door before her smile could slip.

  As she used one hand to hold the tray up and the other to close the bedroom door, she heard Mitch mutter, “That has to be the fakest smile on the planet, Sissy Mae.”

  Chapter 5

  Desiree MacDermot-Llewellyn watched her new partner sniff a tree. If she lifts her leg, I’m leaving. Wait. She was feline. That meant lifting her tail and ...

  Dez shuddered.

  She still wasn’t quite sure how this all happened. She’d gone into work like she did every Monday morning only to find everything had changed. Absolutely everything.

  She now had a new partner and was part of a new ... unit? Actually, the unit had been around when most cops were still Irish and really did walk a beat because there were no cars. But the unit was new to her.

  She knew there were things Mace hadn’t bothered to tell her. Not because he was hiding anything, but he didn’t think about it. Some things simply never occurred to her husband.

  Telling her that the NYPD had its own shifter unit had apparently never occurred to the man. They were based out of Brooklyn—and true, she wouldn’t mind the convenience of not battling into Manhattan every day—and had their own foot patrol, detectives, and SWAT Unit. All of them had been cops in other precincts, and about ninety-five percent were shifters. All kinds of breeds. But five percent were like her. Full-humans who had a link to the shifters, which made them ... safe.

  For Dez, what made her safe was her son.

  He was too precious to her, too important for her to ever risk him.

  Especially when she already had so much to worry about when it came to her boy. Just the other day, they had to change out his crib because he’d punched through the wood slats. Once he had done that, he had grabbed hold of the broken pieces of wood and yanked until he’d made himself a nice hole. If the dogs hadn’t barked like the house was on fire, he would have tumbled out headfirst.

  But because they knew how important her son was to her, the shifters felt they could trust her to protect them all. When she’d called Mace, he’d sounded part impressed and part worried. The cases this unit took on could be more dangerous in some instances and safer in others. But to get in, even for a shifter, was a big deal. It was an important unit, and silence was mandatory.

  And her first case ... Mitch’s attempted murder. The attempted murder no one else in the NYPD knew about.

  “No one was here.”

  Dez turned to face her new partner. Her name was Ellie Souza, out of the Bronx. She was strikingly beautiful and freaky tall. But it was those light gold eyes that Dez found most disarming. Mace’s always seemed like melted gold; this chick’s were a stark light gold that did nothing but make Dez feel she never wanted to meet this woman in a dark alley. Apparently, she was jaguar, the product of a full-human West Indian mother and a shifter Brazilian father. She didn’t say much, which Dez appreciated, but she did have a tendency to stare.

  And that stare wigged Dez out.

  Dez again gauged the distance from this tree to Mitch’s room. “It had to be here. Look at the distance.”

  Souza said nothing, simply turned and walked away. Dez followed, annoyed she felt compelled. But this woman had a way about her. Dez wondered how Souza’s other full-human partners had dealt with her before she’d gotten moved to this unit. This unit with no name and no official record? Hell, at least Dez knew what Souza was. Had a handle on what to expect based on breed. She did wish, though, that they’d hooked her up with a wolf instead. She was a total dog person.

  Suddenly, Souza’s head swung, and she sniffed the air. Her head moved as she searched for the scent. It reminded Dez of when she hid treats around the house and sent her dogs off to find them.

  After several hundred feet, Souza stopped. “Here. She was here.” She leaned against the tree and sniffed. “Yeah. Right here.”

  “She?”

  “Definitely.” She climbed the tree, slipping effortlessly up and briefly getting lost in the branches and leaves. “Definitely a she. On her period.”

  Dez threw her hands up. “Hey! There are some things I don’t need to—”

  “Lion.”

  Shocked into silence, Dez watched Souza flip back out of the tree. She landed with ease and shook her head. “Yeah. You heard me right.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “I’ve got the best nose in the NYPD. She was lion. She was female.” She stared at the tiny stamp that was the hotel Mitch had stayed in. Dez didn’t realize how far away they were until this moment. “And she was a really good shot. Even for a shifter.”

  Souza looked at Dez and gave a small smirk—she didn’t seem to be real big on smiling—and said, “Exactly who did your friend piss off, MacDermot?”

  Sissy stared down at Mitch. She was getting worried. He slept so much. At least, she pretended he was sleeping. It was more like he was passed out. It was Tuesday morning, and except for helping him to the bathroom and spoon-feeding him some more soup, he hadn’t moved a muscle.

  She was used to fevers. Her daddy had gotten them more than once, and he usually recovered in about twenty-four hours. During the fever, her father shifted from man to beast many times over. He had delusions, and he had a thing about grabbing Janie Mae and tussling with her.

  But Mitch had been down since Sunday with no fever and very little movement.

  It began to worry her so much she even called in the town doc. He didn’t seem real happy to deal with a cat, but he’d always liked Sissy and wanted to help. But even he didn’t know what to do with a non-fever-having shifter.

  “Keep an eye on him,” he’d told her. “And hope he don’t die in his sleep.”

  What kind of bedside manner was that anyway?

  Letting out a breath, Sissy tried again not to panic. She felt so alone. How did full-humans live like this? No Pack. No one who watched her back or was just there when she needed someone. She’d give anything to have Ronnie here. Someone who could tell her, “Don’t worry. Mitch will be fine. He’s too crazy to die.”

  But they were still on “radio silence,” as Bobby Ray always put it.

  She sighed when she thought of her brother. She really missed him. He was the rational brains in their partnership, and she was the crazy one who made everyone afraid to push them. It worked brilliantly for them. She wished he was here, but she wouldn’t be the one to ruin his honeymoon. She had a feeling Jessie Ann would think Sissy had used this just to ruin her time with Bobby Ray. They had lots of years to get on each other’s nerves; Sissy would rather not start right away.

  So instead of being surrounded by her Pack and even those annoying dogs, she was trapped in hostile territory with a sick cat and her eldest brother Travis less than a hundred miles away from her.

  She and Travis had never gotten along. He wanted everyone to submit to him, but she never had. Neither did Bobby Ray. And he hated both of them for it.

  It surprised her he hadn’t come by yet, but she knew he would. He’d try to push her out—of that, she had no doubt. Whether she
could stop him was a whole other thing. With both her parents and Ronnie Lee’s out of town, she had no backup and no Pack of her own to protect her.

  And it wasn’t only her brothers she had to worry about. Without her mother’s protection, she had to worry about those who lived on the hill. No one spoke of them. No one uttered their names unless absolutely necessary. They’d been howling for her every night since she’d arrived. It was becoming more insistent, too, the more she ignored them.

  For the first time, Sissy knew what it was like to be completely alone, and she hated it.

  Okay. That was wrong. She wasn’t completely alone. Her aunts had stopped by quite a bit to keep an eye on her. “You need us, you just call,” each of them would tell her on her way out the door.

  She hadn’t told any of them about the calls from the hill. To be honest, she was afraid of what her aunts would do. Those on the hill didn’t get along too well with the Lewis sisters, and Sissy didn’t want to be responsible for anything happening to her aunts. She loved them too much. And she really didn’t want to hear the shit she’d get from her momma.

  Sissy frowned when she realized the corkboard over Mitch’s head was moments from falling on him. It had been part of her room since she was twelve and held her all-important travel list. All the places she’d been planning to go since she was seven or eight. She left the board up there to remind herself she’d been to most of those places. It helped her deal with her mother. And more than once, after one of her mother’s “lectures,” she’d look at the list, call up Ronnie Lee, and ask something like, “Ever wanted to go to Sydney?” If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the woman did it on purpose.

  No. She better move that board, or Mitch would wake up with more wounds than he went to sleep with.

  Mitch opened his eyes, closed them, and then opened them wide.

  “There are big breasts in my face,” he announced to anyone who would listen.

  “Wha—oh, stop it.”